(70) Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you will kill you.”
Love is our source of life and vitality and the only path leading to everlasting life. When you discover the Divine Love within and feed and nourish it consistently by sharing it with others, it will grow, flourish, and finally take over completely when you awaken. Only then can you claim your inheritance as a child of God. Lack of love brings us suffering, disease, and death. If you ignore and neglect the seed of love within, your body and mind will die and you will have to start over again, without the benefit of remembering the lessons that you have learned in your current life. Experience of the Divine within puts our human life into proper perspective and allows us to focus on achieving the true goal of our earthly existence: awakening God within us.
(71) Jesus said, “I will destroy this house, and no one (will be able to build it again).”
A similar phrase is used in Mark 14:58: “I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man.” Our ego is the house that each of us needs to demolish. It is a mad, angry, and unhappy animal within that wants to kill everything in sight at the slightest provocation. It is a hungry ghost within that always screams for more and more. It is a loud voice within that cries like a little child: “Me, me, me! What about me?!” It is a mental disease that holds humanity in its deadly grip, pushing our species towards extinction. The ego is the Satan that Jesus expelled from himself and many of his followers. We have to tame this beast if mankind is to survive.
Each of us has to do the work that Jesus did—let’s take down the walls of the prisons that we built for ourselves in our minds. Everything in us that is unloving, uncaring, and selfish needs to go. When that happens we will be free to love and receive love from others. Our world will be free of disease, suffering, and death—the way God planned it. Jesus and others started the process of awakening our species and demonstrated what is possible when we reach the next stage of evolution. Thanks to them, there is no going back. The doors to Heaven are open and our destiny is to awaken to our glorious future.
(72) A man said to him, “Tell my brothers to divide my father’s possessions with me.” He said to him, “O man, who has made me a divider?” He turned to his disciples and said to them, “I am not a divider, am I?”
Jesus again stresses here the importance of unity in all aspects of our life. He was not a divider. On the contrary, he came to restore our lost unity with God. Our goal in this life is to strive for wholeness and unity. The man described in this saying who feels that he is unfairly treated needs to find a loving way to deal with his brothers and to claim his share of the inheritance. If he fails to obtain what he wants by peaceful means, he should not resort to violence or revenge, but instead he should let go of his anger and forgive them and be grateful to God for what he already has. There is no reason to complain about anything that happens to us or to blame others for our fate.
In truth, there is nobody “out there” who can be held responsible for what happens to us—we are fully responsible for our own lives. When “bad” things happen to us, they are simply the result of our previous erroneous actions—we can only blame ourselves for them. And everything that happens to us is also an opportunity to either move closer to awakening or to take a step away from Heaven. It is our choice how we respond to the challenges posed to us by our brothers and sisters: selfishly or selflessly.
(73) Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but there are few workers. Beg the Lord that he may send workers into the harvest.”
This saying is also known from the synoptic gospels. True seekers willing to work on themselves are few, even though the reward is eternal life. There are very few people willing to let go of their egos and follow the teachings of Jesus. For majority of us it is very difficult to be selfless without knowing the truth about our condition. As long as we perceive the world in terms of duality (e.g., us and them, me and the other people), we don’t have an incentive to care for others and to put them ahead of our own wants and desires. Once we realize that we are walking inside our own mind and that separation is an illusion—that each of us is the whole universe and that we don’t really need anything else to be perfectly happy and peaceful—then we can start the healing process that will ultimately lead to awakening. The more of us that awaken, the less suffering we will have to endure individually and collectively.
Paradoxically, suffering is what makes us much more receptive to the message from God. It is the most powerful incentive to work on ourselves and to awaken. Thus, suffering is a blessing in disguise. Should we then beg God for more suffering? Not really—God wants us to awaken without suffering. We bring suffering to ourselves by living our lives in discordance with God’s plan, by paddling against the stream of life. When we surrender to God’s will, our suffering lessens and eventually disappears without a trace. The best prayer in this case is to pray with our life, with all of our actions instead of words. We can beg God for more workers by striving to follow Jesus’ example to the best of our ability, never giving up the spiritual path.
(74) He said, “O Lord, there are many around the well, but there is nothing in the well.”
There are so many people who look for love, freedom, and happiness in all kinds of wrong places. This world is an example of such a place and it can be compared to an empty well, which doesn’t satisfy the thirst for living water. The bubbling spring of eternal life awaits discovery within each of us. Instead of following the sheep impulse to do what everyone else does, chasing after happiness in the outside world, we need to look for wisdom and salvation within. Be brave, dare to be different, question all learned “truths,” don’t leave a stone unturned—and thus discover the only real truth: your own. A path of self-discovery is the narrow path described by Jesus, which leads to salvation. Very few have chosen to follow that path so far.
(75) Jesus said, “Many are standing at the door, but it is those who are whole that will enter the bridal chamber.”
The theme of oneness/unity returns again. All of the levels of our being have to be unified and integrated before we can awaken. Our healing requires that we acknowledge and assimilate our shadow—these aspects of ourselves we don’t like and tend to project onto others. We also need to balance our male and female aspects and to inhabit our bodies fully. But most of all we need to learn who we really are—only then will we have a chance to become whole. Each of us has to follow our own unique way and learn our individual lessons before we can enter the bridal chamber. The correct path for one is not necessarily a correct path for another. The sacrament of the Bridal Chamber is one of the two lost sacraments of early Christianity (the other one is the sacrament of Redemption, where the candidates formally reject all of their worldly attachments—see the Gospel of Philip). In the sacrament of the Bridal Chamber all of our polarities are finally united in a spiritual marriage, and a human being is united with God. The sacrament of the Bridal Chamber was the final step on the Christian spiritual path, transforming a Christian into a Christ.
(76) Jesus said, “The Kingdom of the Father is like a merchant who had a consignment of merchandise and who discovered a pearl. That merchant was wise. He sold the merchandise and bought the pearl alone for himself. You too look for His treasure, which does not perish, and which stays where no moth can reach it to eat it, and no worm destroys it.”
The perfect, priceless pearl that each of us has to discover within is our true identity—the Love itself. It is the treasure that doesn’t perish, unlike material goods, power, or any other illusory and impermanent “merchandise” that this world has to offer. It is worth losing everything else to discover this priceless jewel hiding inside each of us. Once we discover the pearl and clean the mud covering it, it will shine with the eternal light of the Father. That pearl is our passkey to the eternal peace and joy of the Kingdom of Heaven. See also the Hymn of the pe
arl in the Acts of Thomas.
77. Jesus said, “I am the light that is over all. I am the All. The All came forth out of me, and to me the All has come. (2) Split a piece of wood and I am there. (3) Lift a stone, and you will find me there.”
Christ is one with God and thus is everywhere, in everything and in everyone, wherever we look. He is the wind caressing our faces and the song of a bird awakened by the first rays of the sun. He is the breath in our lungs. Paul in Col 3: 11 states this in an even more direct manner: “Christ is all and in all.” The world we see and live in is the body of God, and our own bodies are part of His body, too. The resurrected mind is a purified mind, a mind shared with God. One way to describe the Divine is as the ever-present consciousness, which watches and experiences everything through us. Consciousness itself is timeless and therefore does not evolve; it was never born and does not die. However, when it becomes the manifested universe, it appears to be subject to time and it seems to undergo an evolutionary process. No human mind is capable of fully comprehending reasons for this process, but we can glimpse it within ourselves and become conscious participants in this mystery.
78. (1) Jesus said, “Why have you come out into the desert? To see a reed shaken by the wind? (2) And to see a man clothed in fine garments like your kings and your great men? (3) Upon them are the fine garments, and they are unable to recognize the truth.”
The crowds followed Jesus wherever he went. People were attracted by his fame as a miracle-maker, healer, and controversial spiritual teacher. If asked directly, many of them wouldn’t have been able to give a clear answer why they chose to follow him. Jesus is trying to force his followers to look within for the answer. What is it that they find attractive about him? Did they come to the desert for sightseeing purposes or to admire nature? Was it his dress or appearance that was so attractive? Or perhaps his message that resonated in their hearts? Jesus’ contemporaries often did not understand these teachings, but were eager to witness his deeds. One can imagine that once they got closer to him they were affected by his charisma, and felt peace and joy radiating from him. It was God’s Love emanating from Jesus, and his wisdom that was attracting people like a magnet. The “great men and powerful rulers” with all external signs of power are as confused and lost as everyone else in this world, or perhaps even more than other “less fortunate” people. This saying serves to point out the contrast between being powerful and famous and knowing the truth. We should not expect to hear words of wisdom from those who choose to pursue power and wealth instead of love and service to others.
79. (1) A woman from the crowd said to him, “Blessed are the womb which bore you and the breasts which nourished you.”
(2) He said to her, “Blessed are those who have heard the word of the Father and have truly kept it. (3) For there will be days when you will say, ‘Blessed are the womb which has not conceived and the breasts which have not given milk.’”
(1–2) What are symbolically passed to us through our mother’s milk are our deepest beliefs, convictions, and the worldview that we take for granted. Yet these are exactly the things we need to question and reject if they are incompatible with God’s love. To grow and to awaken we need to transcend our parents, to become more open-minded, loving, and caring than they are. We have to overcome the neuroses and idiosyncrasies we inherited from previous generations and to break vicious cycles of abuse and madness that often go back for centuries. Irrespective of what kind of background we come from, it is only important whether our eyes and ears open up to the word of God. When we live in alignment with our true identity, we bring happiness and joy to others.
(3) When we blindly follow the inherited ways of thinking and behaving, we move away from God, we bring about pain and suffering for ourselves and for everyone around us, and we are more likely to invoke curses rather than blessings from people we interact with. Ironically, the same people who program their children with negative, selfish patterns will complain bitterly when their own children treat them in the manner they learned from their parents.
(80) Jesus said, “He who has recognized the world has found the corpse, but whoever has found this dead body, of him the world is not worthy.”
What is the difference between recognizing the world for what it is (a corpse) and finding a dead body? Perhaps it is the difference between knowing intellectually that this world is an illusion as opposed to actually experiencing and then living this truth. Gnostics often described people who live apart from God and are enslaved by their ego as dead. Indeed, it is hard to argue that someone who follows blindly and unquestioningly his or her programming—someone who behaves like a robot—is truly alive. That’s what happens when we become imprisoned by our lowest impulses and emotions, when we react automatically to challenges facing us every day without tailoring our behavior to each circumstance. We are also dead when we live in the past or the future instead of living in the present moment. As we start to awaken we realize with astonishment that the majority of people live in a trance, unable to break the habits imprinted in their minds and bodies. These habitual patterns force them to behave in ways that make them unhappy or even sick. See also Saying 56.
(81) Jesus said, “Let him who has grown rich be king, and let him who possesses power renounce it.”
Many people pursue power, fame, status, sex, or money single-mindedly. When they gain everything that can be gained from the world, they have an opportunity to see that even presidential power and billions of dollars don’t provide the peace of mind, happiness, and joy they were searching for. Quite the opposite—the worries they had when they were not affluent or powerful are replaced by a new set of problems, often more pernicious than the original ones. They still live in fear, perhaps even more fear than those who are poor and powerless. They are vulnerable to aging and suffering, and they fear losing the power and riches they have accumulated. They don’t trust anyone since they believe that everyone else is just like them: greedy, dishonest, and selfish. They become enslaved by the things they have pursued for so long, turning into birds imprisoned in golden cages. Freedom is possible only when they renounce the things that they have pursued so fiercely.
Unfortunately, most of us have a hard time believing that fulfilling our desires will not bring us the happiness that we all hunger for. Some of the early Gnostic sects—for example, the Carpocratians—encouraged their members to experience certain vices such as sexual licentiousness to the maximum so that they would learn firsthand that even having an unlimited quantity and variety of sex does not bring true happiness and joy.
(82) Jesus said, “He who is near me is near the fire, and he who is far from me is far from the Kingdom.”
Jesus speaks here as the Christ. The fire is a symbol of the love that burns and purifies everything that is not compatible with God. The closer we get to the Christ within, the closer we are to the Kingdom of Heaven. Our happiness grows when we align ourselves with our true and shared identity—that of Christ.
According to mystics, we never left the Paradise—and everything that happens to us is meant to help each of us awaken to that fact. We don’t really live in a hostile world, and we don’t have to fear anything or anyone—instead, we walk perfectly safe and loved inside the mind of God. Even people who we perceive as nasty, mean, or hostile are not necessarily what they seem—they are simply scared, like everyone else.
A Course in Miracles aptly states that there are only two kinds of interactions between people: expressions of love and cries for love. If we pay attention to our interactions with other people, we will see that when they attack or try to hurt us, they do it to escape from their own pain, suffering, and fear. They want us to respond with love, to re-affirm that they are still lovable even though they have behaved in a horrible way. We all search for love, but we have to find it first inside of us instead of looking for it outside. When we awaken, we will know the true depth of God’s love for us. We will also know how to act truly lovingly towards others in ways that m
ay not always appear loving or kind to them, but which unerringly will bring them closer and closer to awakening.
(83) Jesus said, “The images are visible to humanity, but the light within them is hidden in the image. The light of the Father will reveal itself, but his image is hidden by his light.”
Compare this saying with the Gospel of Philip 67: “The truth did not come naked into the world, but came in types and images. The world would not be able to receive it otherwise.” The light of God is hidden in everything, and it makes everything alive. Nonetheless, that light is not God himself. Just like the images of the living beings hide the light of God, the bright light that has been experienced and described by many mystics is merely a representation of the invisible, ineffable God.
(84) Jesus said, “When you see your likeness you are happy. But when you see your images that came into existence before you—which neither die nor become manifest—how will you be able to bear such greatness?”
Many of us enjoy looking at our own likeness in the mirror—like mythological Adonis we often fall in love with our own bodies. Some of us exercise, try to eat well, and make an effort to look good. It gives us pleasure to beautify ourselves; we spend thousands of dollars on cosmetics, plastic surgery, and other treatments that keep us looking younger. Yet even those perfect, beautiful bodies are mercilessly affected by time—we can’t stop the aging process forever.
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